Living For and Dying To

Scripture: For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:10-11

Observation: Paul begins this chapter talking about if we should continue to sin because we have grace, and immediately answers 'no' because we have died to sin. The then plays with death both metaphorically and literally. He discusses Jesus and his death, his sacrifice. He talks about our baptism as a way of dying with Christ. He speaks of then sharing in a resurrection ... for both Jesus and us, we are raised to a life both eternally in heaven, but also separated from our sin here on earth.

Paul's message is interwoven, but not so difficult to pull apart ... faith in Jesus means we must die to our sins, and live in Christ, and in so doing we will some day die, but live eternally. The dual metaphor continues. We are not live "for" our sin, whereby our actions are motivated by a desire or behaviors of earth, but rather live for God and our desire to obey him. Likewise, we are not to live life motivated by some fear death whereby we make that fear a motivating factor in how we interact with others and run our daily lives, but rather we are to live motivated by eternity and how we can someday present ourselves to the Lord as "instruments of righteousness".

Application: We become what we live for, and we live for our highest priority. So what is my highest priority? Is my priority outwardly demonstrating the love of Jesus? Or is it my career? Is my priority pursuing God's statutes, or is it enjoying earthly fun?

On some days, my priorities are the latter things. It is by these that, on any given day, I may get angry, have lustful thoughts, overdrink, or make golf important. In these ways, I am not placing Jesus first.

Yes, there are other days and other times Jesus is first, and I behave as such. But if I am truly dead to my old life, then only the new life should survive. There can be only one thing I live for, and everything else I must die to.

At all times, my highest priority must be Jesus. Not everything else is wrong ... just secondary.

Prayer: Lord, I confess that there are parts of my life that need a full and proper death. They need to die. I surrender these to you. May you be my purpose in life, today and every day, and may anything that is secondary exist only as a means to finding opportunity to serve you. Amen.